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Tuesday, February 21, 2017

I love the portraits of Bronzino. He lived his whole life in Florence
(1503-1572) and was mainly the court painter for the Grand Duke of
Tuscany, who happened to be a very powerful Medici, so there are many
Bronzino portraits of the Medici family scattered throughout museums
around the world. I particularly like his portraits of women. They are
so finely done, rich and detailed and studying the faces of these
ladies, I can really see their personalities come through the paint. And
the jewelry.....holy 24 karats, Batgirl!
Let's just say Bronzino had embellishing down to, well , a fine art. (see what I did there?)

Here's how I started out....
I began with my usual routine of giving everything a good coat of gesso. Sigh....I do love gesso.
I wanted the Triptych-Tower Top to stand out in contrast with the color I was planning on using, so I painted everything that was going to show, black.

I
began playing with the layouts of the ladies, moving things around to
the spaces I felt they looked best, keeping in mind that there were
going to be a bunch of contrasting watercolor flowers behind them.

I also connected the back pieces together using my favorite linen hinging tape and painted it black.

i painted the back completely black after the front dried.

After
fussing around with composition some more, I decided that the black
background was a bit too heavy and needed some relief, so I painted the
top part of the black background gold where the pierced top of the
towers show through.

After
gluing down my cut-out images of the ladies and flowers to the back
side of the front frame, I then glued the whole shebang on to the
corresponding backs. I piled some weight on the piece to make sure they
dried flat.

I 'beefed up' the jewelry the ladies are wearing by using Liquid pearls
and adding flat back crystals. The I painted some gold detailing around
each frame, added some metal embellishments and gave it a good few hours
to dry well before I touched up any gold paint. i also made sure that
there were no bits of white peeking out the side of the piece and
touched up the black where I need to.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

A trio of lovely fairy tale ladies to brighten your day. Or not.
The interesting thing about these ladies is that all the images are a bit ambiguous.

Lets take the one called 'The Fairest'. She's beautiful, but does she really look like a nice person?
And what about 'Poison Apple'? Is she about to bite into that apple or give it to some unsuspecting princess?
Hmmmm. The Queen has a rather pleasant face. She may not be evil. Who can tell?
There is always more than one way to tell a story.
I'll let you create your own!

All the ladies got a few sparklies in the way of some Swarocski flat back crystals and some Diamond Stickles.
And there was a liberal use of Liquid Pearls from the Liquid Pearls-Neutral Colors Set in gold and white opal.
All the ladies were also put on pedestals (of course!) And I used the Medium Wooden Finial
painted with the appropriate pearl colors for each lady.

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Hello folks! Valentine's Day is just around the corner so I was inspired to make a fun Valentine Plaque using the Mini Display Tray-Heart.
I chose this partly because when I was thinking about making a
Valentine, it struck me as I picked it up that it's about the same size
as a smallish box of Valentine chocolates.
Having had that thought, I immediately had to paint it chocolate brown and then the rest of the piece fell into place.

I
started out with my usual coat of gesso and while that was drying I cut
and glued the paper to the back piece. A nice rich shade of brown with
some gold highlights.

I painted the top frame piece with a matte acrylic brown, making sure I got the sides and all the inside bits.

I
cut out my collage images and played with the arrangement until I got
the visual I liked, and them trimmed off what wasn't going to show.

I glued everything in place and added all the details........

I
used Liquid Pearls in gold and pearl to highlight her jewelry and to
make her crown really pop, I put a few Swarovski flat back crystals in
the centerpiece. Now she really has a great 'jewel' in there!

I
added Liquid Pearl details and some Dresden trim to the phrase and the
curly top piece. Which, by the way, is a portion of one of the frames
from the Filigree Frames Shape Set. I use bits and pieces from these all the time to add pretty details to my pieces.

This piece is pretty straight forward to make and it's fun. Hope you make one yourself!

This month at Alpha Stamps

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Fun with polymer clay!

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Copying is one way to learn and that is grand. Learn, have fun, and then make it your own.Go out there and make fantabulous things!Please don't publish or reproduce my workin any way, for any reason without my permission.You can ask me, I'm pretty nice.